A gust of cold wind froze Ibrahim Fawaz in his tracks as he pulled open the door of the al-Hijrah Mosque. This was his twenty-fifth winter in Holland and still he was not accustomed to the cold. Providence and fate had brought him here, to this garden of cinder block and cement in northern Europe, but in his heart he was still an ibn balad from Upper Egypt—a son of the soil and a child of the river. He stood in the vestibule for a moment, turning up his coat collar and tightening his scarf, then stepped tentatively into the street under the watchful gaze of two rosy-cheeked Amsterdam policemen. He exchanged pleasantries with them in fluent Dutch, then turned and set out along the Jan Hazenstraat.

The two police officers were now a permanent fixture outside the mosque. The al-Hijrah had been searched twice by Dutch investigators in the wake of the attack in London. Files and computers had been seized, and the imam and several of his associates had been questioned about their knowledge of Samir al-Masri and the other members of his cell. Tonight the imam had accused the infidels of using the attacks in London and the murder of Solomon Rosner as justification for a crackdown against Islam in the Netherlands. Ibrahim Fawaz had lived through a crackdown against Muslims before, one that had been conducted with a ruthlessness and a savagery that the Europeans, even in their worst nightmares, could scarcely imagine. The imam was only using the police investigation as a pretext to stir up trouble. But then that was what the imam did best. That was why the imam had been sent to Amsterdam in the first place.

A car overtook him. Ibrahim saw his shadow stretch on the pavement in front of him, then disappear as the car slid past. When it was gone, he found that he was in pitch-darkness. It seemed that three lamps near the end of the street were no longer burning. In the small park on the embankment of the canal, a man was seated alone on one of the benches. He had a pinched face, haunted dark eyes, and was as thin as Nile reed grass. A heroin addict, he thought. They were all over Amsterdam. They came from Europe and America to take advantage of Holland’s permissive drug laws, and the generous welfare benefits, and, once hooked, many never found the power or the will to leave again.